St John's Ambulance Service and Plunket are the other New Zealand health providers that are currently using Microsoft's cloud services.

These cloud services are also used by IT solution providers for the health sector, including Datacom, Stratos, Volpara, McKesson and Intergen.

"I am delighted by this news as it further supports the ability for health providers and digital partners to utilise advanced technologies to enable the delivery of enhanced services to New Zealanders," said Scott Arrol, chief executive of New Zealand Health IT (NZHIT).

US$1.3 billion health tech industry

New Zealand's health tech industry is worth US$1.3 billion to the local economy, and boasts established exporters like Orion Health, and more than a hundred other smaller independent software vendors.

The health tech sector in New Zealand is continuously growing and provides burgeoning opportunity for export to the fast growing global health market.

New Zealand's health tech industry and Microsoft will work closely for the next five years and aim for an increased export growth built on a strong local market.

The synergy focuses on supporting the development of new models of care and enabling health service delivery.

"The Ministry of Health's decision to accept the use of Microsoft's public cloud for storage of personal health records will help transform the eHealth agenda in New Zealand. It comes at exactly the right time, as globally we are at an inflexion point of all of this innovation in the sector," said Gabe Rijpma, senior director of Health and Social Services Asia at Microsoft.